Everyone in Rochester’s eastern suburbs knows the Marsh Road bridge, a busy 105-year-old, one-lane span over the Erie Canal in the Perinton hamlet of Bushnell’s Basin.

They know it as “Standoff Bridge,” “Stalemate Bridge,” “Standstill Bridge,” and expletive-laced names that can’t be printed here.

That’s because every day, for as long as any of them can remember, motorists crossing the bridge in opposite directions meet windshield to windshield on the span, forcing one of them to reverse course so the other may pass.

“I call it ‘Standoff Bridge’ because people don’t want to go backwards,” said Perinton Supervisor Mike Barker. “I’m shocked that nobody has had a fistfight there.”

This happens because the bridge and its approaches on either end take the shape of an inverted “S,” a design that offers motorists no sight line across the 148-foot span, and leaves them guessing whether they’ll meet another car in the middle.

The steel-grated bridge deck, or roadway, is shy of 15 feet wide. That includes a slightly elevated strip meant for pedestrians. The width sufficed in 1912 when horse-drawn carriages ruled the road and Henry Ford hadn’t envisioned a car wider than a Model T.

That sadistic — albeit thoroughly amusing — form of entertainment may be coming to an end with a long-awaited $2.2 million state Department of Transportation rehabilitation project that will, among other things, widen the approaches to the bridge next year.

The work is tentatively scheduled to run from January through November, and the DOT anticipates the bridge being closed from January to June.

The primary purpose of the rehab is to strengthen the truss bridge to accommodate more than seven tons.

As it stands, fire engines from the Bushnell’s Basin Fire Department take a seven-mile detour, through a separate fire district, to reach the hundreds of homes they’re assigned to serve on the north side of the canal.

But an ancillary benefit of the project will be wider approaches that the DOT says will improve visibility that could reduce, if not end, the daily standoffs.

“I’m excited that they’re finally going to get that done and I’m praying — I’m not optimistic, but I’m praying — it gets fixed before we have a fight on that bridge,” Barker said.

Sometimes, if bridge drivers are exceedingly courteous, they find themselves in what's been coined a Canadian standoff, a fawning display of politeness in which both parties back up and invite the other to cross first.

After you. No, I insist, after you.Really, it’s no trouble. Thank you, but I wouldn’t hear of it.

More often, though, drivers lock into a Mexican standoff and wait for the other to cede ground before one of them begrudgingly gives in and shifts into reverse with a huff.

All right, buddy, what’s it gonna be? I ain’t backing up. No way, I backed up last time. Ugh, God, fine!

The only respite from standoffs in recent years has come from temporary closures for emergency repairs, which have occurred on several occasions for days and weeks at a time since 2014.

Despite those fixes, the bridge is rated “structurally deficient” by the DOT. The agency insists that designation only means the bridge is sub-standard, not unsafe.

But on the matter of visibility, Marsh Road bridge is paradoxically unsafe. It’s so unsafe, it’s safe, in that motorists recognize crossing the span is so risky they exercise extreme caution when approaching.

Local, state and federal elected officials have been clamoring for improvements to the bridge for years, particularly that it be widened or that traffic lights be installed.

The DOT won’t do either. Spokesman Joseph Morrissey said the agency considers the bridge an “historic structure,” and that traffic signals could result in backups to the nearby busy intersection of Route 96.

If any elected official could appreciate the historic significance of the bridge, it would be Barker, who taught high school history before he became supervisor. But even he can’t see the argument.

“I was really hoping they would make it a two-lane because I don’t appreciate the historical ramifications of that particular bridge at all,” he said. “It’s just a pain in the neck.”